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The main objective of this study was to investigate the types and causes of landslides in Kittony area of Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya. The specific objectives were: To establish the types of landslides prevalent in Kittony area and identify the factors that cause landslides in Kittony area of Elgeyo Marakwet County. The study population comprised of 2000 residents of Kittony area in Elgeyo Marakwet County. Five members of the local administration and the County Geologist were included in the study. The sample size consisted of the following respondents: Two hundred and forty six residents of Kittony area which translated to 12.3 % of the total population was selected as study respondents through Simple Random Sampling. One local chief of Kittony area and a County Geologist was purposively selected and interviewed. This study adopted a descriptive survey research design and utilized a qualitative research methodology. The systems theory was used to underpin the study and a conceptual framework showing the interrelationship between the dependent and independent variables was used to guide and conceptualize the study. The findings of the study included: The types of landslides that exist in the area are mudslides, rock fall and earth flows. The heavy rains, poor soils and the rugged topography in the area as factors that triggered landslides. That the government despite assisting by providing humanitarian assistance and advising people to move to safer locations, more was needed in terms of relocating residents to safer areas and converting the affected areas into forest lands, building gabions to control soil erosion and controlling other human activities. This study can also be replicated in other areas having similar problems.

The adsorption of mercuric ions (Hg2+) on nano zinc oxide (ZnO-NPs) structure was studied using the Monte Carlo simulation and the density functional theory (DFT) methods. The obtained results have shown that the adsorption process is thermodynamically favorable. The mercuric ions are strongly adsorbed on the ZnO-NPs structures due to the formation of the chemical bonds resulted from the positive overlap between p-orbitals of the adsorbate species and the p-orbitals of the zinc atoms in the structure of ZnO-NPs.

Kaolin is a clay mineral that has a wide application in the industry, depending on its purity. The quality of kaolin mined around the world is depleting especially with depth and rate of mining. Consequently the usability of this mineral is threatened by the presence of some inherent impurities. Beneficiation enhances kaolin applications; hence, it becomes imperative to understudy comparative means of upgrading kaolin, for the process integration and optimization. The amenability of using magnetic separation for removing the iron oxide and titanium oxide impurities from the Egyptian Kaolin has been studied. Different variables affecting of magnetic separation process such as solid percent, magnetic field, matrix loading capacity, and retention time were studied. The results indicated that substantial decrease in iron oxide (from 1.69 % to 0.75 %) and TiO2 (from 3.1 % to 0.71 %) contents as well as improving iso-brightness (from 63.76 % to 75.21 % and whiteness (from 79.85 % to 86.72 %) of the product could be achieved.

The structural complexity within the basement complex of Zaria batholith makes refraction survey and interpretation a very difficult task. Assignment of picked travel time into different layers which is critical for refraction tomography inversion is almost impossible, because it is very difficult to determine when the refraction event becomes the first break in a processed seismic data. Therefore, this research work is aimed at designing a technique that will help in establishing the time at which the refraction event becomes the first break in such situation. The procedure involves conventional travel time plots, identification of the time at which the refraction energy arrives with the aid of the conventional time plot, assignment of layers to the various travel time picks and the tomography inversion process. The results of the conventional travel time plots revealed that average time at which the refraction event becomes the first break was determined to be 33 ms. This was used to assign layers to the travel time picks that were used for tomography inversion that generated a tomography model that correlated very well with a borehole log sited at the centre of the profile. It was concluded that conventional refraction travel time plot will serve as a viable tool for estimating the time at which the refraction event becomes the first break necessary for refraction tomography inversion in regions of substantial complexity or for seismic refraction data that has very low signal to noise ratio.

The optimized molecular structure, vibrational frequencies, corresponding vibrational assignments and thermodynamic properties of N-(4-methoxybenzylidene) aniline (N4MBA) have been investigated by using ab initio HF/6-311++G(d,p) and DFT/B3LYP method at 6-311G(d,p) and 6-311++G(d,p) basis sets. The energy and oscillator strength calculated by TD-DFT are in line with experimental findings. Moreover, we have not only simulated HOMO and LUMO, but also determined the energy band gap. The stability of the molecule arising from hyperconjugative interaction and charge delocalization has been analyzed using natural NBO analysis. Besides, Mulliken charges were also calculated. IR and Raman intensities were calculated and TED also has been reported.

Vision based AGV (Automatic Guided Vehicle) with RTOS (uC/OS-II) is designed and developed for controlling two wheeled differential servo motor drive. In order to meet the demand of function, reliability, cost and real time performance compared to its commercial counterpart of general purpose computer the system is implemented with RTOS. The multi-processor embedded system with distributed architecture consists of a main-controller of vehicle management based on the ARM LPC2378, and a sub-controller of vision navigation based on the DSP BF533. The embedded RTOS uC/OS-II is used to construct a software development platform, on which different functions needed are described as several tasks, and a number of system services facilitate software realization. In the practical application of device reformation, a commercial AGV product is upgraded by the embedded vehicular controller we develop, on which a sophisticated algorithm of path tracking is implemented successfully and efficiently. The experimental result demonstrates the effectivity and advantages of the embedded multi-processor controller with the RTOS uC/OS-II presented in this paper versus its commercial competitor.

Abdominal elcetrocardiograms make it possible to dertermne the fetal heart rate and to detect multuiple fetuses and are often used during labor and delivery.the background noise due to muscular activity and feotus motion, however, often had an amplitude equal to or grater than that of fetal heartbeat.A still more serious problem is the mother’s heart beat,which has an amplitude 2 to 10 times grater thatn that of the fetal heartbeat, and often interferes in recording[1]. The Maternal ECG (MECG) is the main source of interference in Fetal ECG (FECG) monitoring. The MECG is detected at all electrodes placed on the mother’s skin (thoracic and abdominal). In the case of multi-fetal pregnancies the traditional adaptive filtering technique provides a “maternal clean“ signal consisting of the two fetal ECG signals. The noise was found to be too strong for the algorithm (and the naked eye) to notice any fetal heart signal[1]. This paper briefs the implementation of Adaptive noise cancellation algorithms such as LMS algorithm and RLS algorithm using MATLAB 6 (R12) suitable for real time implementation, which can be used during measurements, is being developed using VLSI. The best solution in case of multiple fetuses is the BSS filtering which has successfully been implemented in MATLAB.

Physiochemical parameters of river water and groundwater samples from Morang and Gumani river basin, Jharkhand was assessed to find out their suitability for domestic and irrigation use. Water samples were categorized as Ca2+ – Mg2+ – HCO3- hydro-geochemical facies and cation and anions are mainly derived from the rock. Individual concentration of Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ , Cl-, F- and SO42+ are within the prescribed limit of WHO and BIS standards. However, NO3- of one groundwater is higher than the permissible limit. River and groundwater is safe for irrigation as per the Soluble Sodium Percentage (SSP) or %Na, Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR) and salinity hazard parameter. Magnesium hazard (MH) river water is not suitable for the irrigation and special care needs prior to use.

The purpose of the study was to establish English student teachers’ knowledge of writing strategies to facilitate instruction of writing skills. The specific objectives were: to find out introduction strategies used by participants when writing essays, to establish strategies used by participants to ensure coherence of the written essay and to examine conclusion strategies used by the participants in essay writing. A total of 37 fourth year English student teachers’ were used in the study. The instrument used for data generation was document analysis of written essays. The study revealed that the student teachers lack sufficient knowledge of writing strategies. The study recommends that: English Language Teacher Educators should design a course about communication strategies for effective essay writing to be taught to student teachers specializing in English to equip them with both content and pedagogical knowledge for effective teaching. Examining of the course should include writing essays to motivate students to practice and master writing strategies for effective communication. English language teacher educators should coordinate and ensure that the content courses taught by other schools apart from the school of education are relevant and meet the needs of English Language Teaching in Kenya.

This paper examines the legal framework for copyright protection in Nigeria and the USA. This work critically analyses laws in both countries for copyright protection. The USA and Nigeria Copyright Acts extend protection to computer software by treating software as a literary work. Copyright based industries operating in the country contribute trillions of naira to Nigeria’s gross domestic product. Despite the enormous benefits which the country has derived from computer related products, Nigeria remains the largest piracy destination and markets in the world though these same products are ostensibly protected by the Copyright Act, Similarly, according to a study titled: “Addressing global software piracy” conducted by Microsoft in partnership with the US government agencies and consumers in 2010, software piracy recorded $750 billion dollars in lost revenues and millions of lost jobs in software industries. Causes of piracy and counterfeiting have been discussed and recommendations have been made on how to eliminate them.